Background: 99% sure I will be upgrading electronics to HB 898 very shortly. Will also be getting a new map chip. Almost all fishing done in WI and fish all areas of state w/ exception of NW qaudrant from Eau Claire north to Superior. I already have a 2010 Nav Hot Map premium that I run in Lowrance 334 unit that I'll be moving to bow.

On surface, lakemaster appears far short of even my existing Hot Maps chip in terms of high definition lakes for WI- (316 vs over 1000 in WI for HotMaps). From reading many threads here and other places, it appears Lakemaster is known for a bit more accuracy, but is that is only for their hi-def lakes?? I realize there are things you can do with lakemaster chips in a HB unit that you can't w/ HotMaps (adjust for lake level, highlight contour depths), but if I'm not on a Lakemaster hi def lake at the time, I see this as somewhat meaningless, because if the LM non hi def lakes are like Hot Maps non hi def lakes, the contour accuracy is poor to extremely poor anyway.

What am I missing here? For those of you that are using both for WI and fish multiple waters like me, some hi def and some not, what do you recommend and why?

On the non-HD lakes, trying to figure out the differences between LakeMaster and Nav chips isn't particularly useful.

On the HD, independently surveyed lakes, LakeMaster wins, hands-down. I fish all over the northern half of the state, and I've seen enough differences to know that LakeMaster is the chip to run.

Since you're running a Humminbird, LakeMaster is the obvious choice.

In addition to the highest quality data and access to the Humminbird/LakeMaster exclusive chart customization features, you'll also enjoy very fast map redraws (which can definitely be an issue when running at high speed while using a Nav chip), and a steady stream of new HD lakes being added to the chip. Something tells me that we'll see even more functionality from the LakeMaster-Humminbird pairing in the future.

LakeMaster-WI for Humminbird, version 3, is due out shortly. Look for even more HD lakes in this chip than ever before.